George Dvorsky

New Weight Loss Drug Mimics The Effects Of Eating An Entire Meal

Researchers at the Salk Institute have developed a new weight loss pill that tricks the body into believing it has consumed calories, which then triggers a fat-burning response. The compound, called fexaramine, has only been tested on obese and diabetic mice, but the results of the experiment are so promising that human trials are next.…

A helium balloon fitted with six telescopes is currently floating over Antarctica. It’s called SPIDER, and it could show what happened during the Big Bang. Scientists will use it to search for patterns of polarization that could have only been made in primordial light in the fractions of seconds after the birth of the Universe.

Archaeologists Have Uncovered The Tomb Of An Unknown Egyptian Queen 

Czech archaeologists working in Egypt have discovered the tomb of a previously unknown queen. Named Khentakawess III, she is thought to have been the wife of Pharaoh Neferefre who reigned 4,500 years ago. The discovery was made by Miroslav Barta and his team from the Czech Institute of Egyptology, reports Agence France-Presse. The tomb is…

Which Animals Appear Most Frequently on National Geographic Covers?

Nearly a quarter of all National Geographic covers has an animal on it. This infographic shows which of them get featured the most. NatGeo has been putting out illustrated covers for 55 years (the magazine itself has been around for 126 years). Since then, 153 of its 665 covers has featured an animal. Here’s how…

An Ancient Greek Palindrome Has Been Discovered on this Amulet

Archaeologists working in Cyprus have discovered a 1,500-year-old amulet with a 59-letter inscription that reads the same backwards as it does forwards. As LiveScience reports, the amulet, which measures 1.4 inches by 1.6 inches, was discovered at the ancient city of Nea Paphos in Southwest Cyprus. On one side there are several images, including a…

This Freaky New Frog Gives Birth To Live Tadpoles, Not Eggs

Scientists have never seen anything quite like this before. It’s a newly discovered species of fanged frog that gives direct birth to live tadpoles instead of laying eggs. It isn’t that rare for scientists to find new species of animals, but finding an entirely new mode of reproduction is a different story altogether. The newly…

Math Suggests Most Cancers Are Caused By “Bad Luck”

Two-thirds of all cancers are caused by random mutations and not genetics or lifestyle factors, say scientists from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. The new paper, which now appears in the journal Science, suggests that 22 out of the 31 cancer types analyzed are simply the result of biological bad luck. These include leukemia,…

How Humanity Will Conquer Space Without Rockets

Getting out of Earth’s gravity well is hard. Conventional rockets are expensive, wasteful, and as we’re frequently reminded, very dangerous. Thankfully, there are alternative ways of getting ourselves and all our stuff off this rock. Here’s how we’ll get from Earth to space in the future. Top image: Britain’s Skylon Spaceplane. Image: Reaction Engines Limited…

A Dangerous Nemesis Star May Visit Our Solar System Many Years From Now

A stellar orange dwarf has a 90% chance of passing through the outer reaches of our solar system no earlier than a quarter of a million years from now. Sure, that’s a long way off, but this unwelcome guest could perturb the Oort cloud, flinging dangerous comets towards Earth. Top image: Comet Siding Spring coming…

Incredible Images Show A Python Devouring An Entire Wallaby

A park ranger in Australia’s Nitmiluk national park recently stumbled upon an extraordinary scene: an 8-foot long olive python swallowing an entire agile wallaby joey. All images: Paul O’Neill/Parks and Wildlife Commission NT. As reported in The Guardian, Ranger Paul O’Neill arrived at the scene shortly after the python killed the wallaby. The snake was…

Hackers Reproduce A German Politician’s Fingerprint From Photos

A member of the Chaos Computer Club has shown how you can use photos to reconstruct a person’s fingerprint — and to prove his point, he replicated the thumbprint of the German defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen. For years, security experts have been warning about the inadequacies of fingerprint biometrics. It’s a particularly worrying…

Ants like to turn left when they’re exploring new places. So like many creatures, ants exhibit behavioral lateralization, in which directional biases are built-in. Researchers aren’t sure why ants prefer left, but turning in one evolutionary agreed-upon direction may help them search and exit maze-like spaces, or stick together as a group.

Astronomers Capture A Rare Glimpse Of Eclipsing Jovian Moons

Earlier this month, astronomers surveying Jupiter’s moon Io received an early Christmas surprise when another Jovian moon, Europa, unexpectedly passed in front of it. This is what’s called a transit — when a celestial object passes in front of another object along our visual plane of sight. In this case, Europa passed in front of…

The Most Futuristic Predictions That Came True In 2014

As 2014 comes to a close, it’s time to reflect on the most futuristic breakthroughs and developments of the past year. This year’s crop features a slew of incredible technological, scientific, and social achievements, from mind-to-mind communication to self-guiding sniper bullets. Here are 15 predictions that came true in 2014. Technologically-assisted telepathy was successfully demonstrated…

This Hexapod’s Appendages Are Made From Robotic Snakes

Though it may look like a spider, the legs of this hexapod are actually made from the same technology that allows for sidewinding robotic snakes. The result is a rather creepy, but surprisingly strong and resilient, “snake monster.” This DARPA-funded hexapod was developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon’s Biorobotics Lab, the same team that developed…

The Real Story Behind the 1914 Christmas Truce in World War I

It was 100 years ago this very night that something miraculous happened along the Western Front. After months of bitter fighting, soldiers on both sides gathered in no-man’s-land in a spontaneous show of peace and goodwill. Here’s what happened on that historic day — and why it marked the end of an era. Image by…

An Epic One-Kilometer Cliff On The Surface Of Rosetta’s Comet

While sifting through images taken by the Rosetta spacecraft of Comet 67P, an amateur British astronomer has uncovered a previously unknown vertical cliff that looks like something right out of Mordor. The original image was captured by Rosetta’s NavCam at a distance of 20.1 km from the center of the comet on December 10. But…

Astronomers have detected five rocky planets around an ancient, metal-poor star. At more than twice the age of our solar system, it is potential confirmation that terrestrial Earth-like planets have formed throughout our galaxy’s history — which, in theory, means some intelligent civilizations may have had as much as a 4.6 billion year head start.

A Cool New Theory Explains Why Red Wine Is So Damned Good For You

The antioxidant resveratrol, which is found in red wine and other foods like nuts and soy, is known for its ability to decrease incidence of heart disease and other illnesses, leading some to call it the “elixir of youth.” Researchers at the Scripps Research Institute now have an explanation for how it works. Resveratrol (prounounced…

Your Tablet Computer Is Screwing Up Your Sleep Patterns

A new Harvard study is re-affirming the assertion that reading light-emitting e-books before bed, like computer tablets, could have a detrimental effect on sleep, which can in turn lead to serious health problems. You may already be familiar with the suggestions that too much exposure to light, both before and after we go to bed,…